The solo founder explosion has arrived.
In 2016, 18% of companies that joined Carta were run by solo founders.
Last year it was 36%.
(and the velocity has surged upward since ChatGPT launched).
Big caveat here - the percentage of companies with solo founders that end up funded by VCs is trailing that surge. It's hovering around 20% after last year. But the trend is has turned higher again recently.
𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀
Solo founders are much more common than they used to be.
VCs remain more skeptical of solo founders than founding teams, by and large.
The barriers to creating a company are in perpetual freefall.
Of course our data only looks at companies on Carta, which implies the startup would like to give equity to its employees even if it doesn't raise VC - that's not every business.
So maybe solo is even higher in the general population of young companies!
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